Freenet 0.5 Released

An anonymous reader submits "After over a year in the making, Freenet 0.5 stable has been released. This new version is far superior to previous versions of Freenet." The announcement specifically thanks Matthew Toseland, "without whom this release would still be vaporware," noting "On the 11th of November, Matthew will no longer be able to work full-time unless more people donate, so please give whatever you can spare at our Donations page."

Comments

Thank you!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just would like to be the first to say a big "Thank you!" to the entire FreeNet team.

When I first heard of FreeNet, I thought, "I live in America, what would I need of this?" No, this isn't a troll. I was happy and complacent and slightly distrustful of the Big Bad Brother. Now the purpose of a network like FreeNet has become quite clear, as I'm neither happy nor complacent and I'm more distrustful of Big Brother with each passing day, as he takes further swipes at the freedoms my Constitution tells me I'm supposed to have.

Thanks, FreeNet, for standing up. More importantly, thanks for the foresight. Imagine if they'd waited until it was really necessary.

Re:Thank you!

[mumblestheclown]

How ironic that you mention the Constitution, when Freenet's de facto purpose is to subvert the following:

Article I, Section 8. Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have the power ...

[paragraph 8] To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

Re:Thank you!

[mcubed]

How ironic that you mention the Constitution, when Freenet's de facto purpose is to subvert the following:

I might almost agree with you, had Congress not already subverted it by turning copyright from a limited monopoly into an effectively unending one. So now it becomes a question of "which subversion of the Copyright Clause is better?" My vote goes to Freenet & P2P.

Michael

Re:Just some info

[mumblestheclown]

Ah. You mean the usual:

• In theory it's about truth, justice, and the american way.
• In practice it's an Eminem / Photoshop Plug-Ins / pr0n delivery mechanism.

Re:no legitimate use

[R.Caley]

I'm having a very hard time imagining any nontrivial legitimate use for this technology.

The first which comes to mind is whistle blowing.

OTOH, I think the most likely impact on freedom of speech is

1. A resonable number of people start using it
   
2. It becomes flooded with stolen goods and kiddie porn
   
3. The powers that be make a fuss.
   
4. They use it as an excuse to pass sweeping anti-encrypton (etc) laws.
   
5. We have all taken a big step backwards.
   

On the whole, I think in resonably open societies, suc a the US and Uk still are, the only sane option is `publish and be damned'. That way they at least have to be somewhat public in acting against you. If you hide, they can attack you in hiding, perhaps by attacking everyone who looks a little like you.

Re:no legitimate use

[aqua]

Anonymous publication and retrieval are tools for the politically oppressed. Freenet could, in theory, make any information of value unsuppressible. F'rinstance, an outlawed political group publishing a manifesto, someone reporting the actions of a corrupt government, that sort of thing. Suppose that during the demonstrations in Tiennamen Square, there had been only one camera in private hands; getting that video out would be a perfect job for Freenet.

For which reason, tools like Freenet are banned in China and a number of other nations.

There does exist a tricky bit of how to deliver such technologies to the people in need of them; possession of crypto is still a crime in much of the world, much less crypto intended to do that which oppressive regimes cannot allow.

Re:Just some info

[e8johan]

It is nice to see that one can get +5 Informative by simply copying the What is Freenet? page and saying that it is a bit like Kazza.

It is not like Kazza! This is because it is not spyware and has/will never be accused of being. It is an open source (GPLed) reaction to the growing restrictions of the on-line rights of expression. The point is not that you can copy your warez and p0rn, the point is that you can express yourself anonymously.

Dear moderators, if you haven't read the article and followed at least some of the link, do not moderate! Does "...some kind of a cross between Kazza..." and "...provide efficient service and minimal bandwidth..." sound like something written by the same author in the same message?

Re:uncontrollable network?

[AlCoHoLiC]

Getting source code doesn't mean that entire product goes down the drain. I legally cannot start to sell my own WinXP clone compiled from original source code. There're laws and other measures that prevents such practices.

Information (knowledge) itself isn't good or bad. It's just that: human knowledge. It's entirely upon human being what he does with the knowledge. Man should be held accountable for his deeds not for what he knows.

I know how to make explosives and yet I don't make them. Almost every high school student knows how to make nuke and (surprise, surprise) almost nobody is trying to make one. Just because I possess the information (in your case the source code) it doesn't mean I'm criminal. Nobody has the right to tell me what I'm allowed to know. And that's exactly what Big Brother is trying to do - prevent people from having the information he doesn't want them to know, and to criminalize people who possess such kind of information. Freenet is designed to fight this information slavery.

Re:uncontrollable network?

[deblau]

The software companies attitude could be bad, and mainly oriented towards profit and monopoly. But do even such companies deserve such a death blow? At one stroke, their entire product goes down the drain.

This observation is inevitable. Let's do some basic business logic:

1. [Assume] Businesses need recurring revenue (i.e. you can only burn VC $ for so long)
2. [Assume] As long as your hardware doesn't crap out, software lifetime is infinite
3. [Assume] You have a finite customer base
4. [Assume] If you keep improving your software, eventually it will do everything your customers want
5. [Therefore] You can only sell so many copies of software to your customers before they don't need you any more
6. [Therefore] Software as a product is only good for a limited amount of money, and that isn't recurring
7. [Conclusion] Software as a product is not a viable business model in the long-run

Microsoft is having this problem right now with their operating systems. See, Windows 95 is good enough for most people. It runs AOL/MSN, Word, Outlook Express, Solitaire, and their printer. What more do they need? The MS solution has been to release a new OS every 2 years and hype the hell out of it, as well as purposely not provide patches for their older versions to support newer hardware, thus forcing software upgrades when old boxes die (since the older hardware isn't sold any more). The problem is, people are catching on, and new OS sales are fewer and fewer these days. The same could probably be said for purchases of Office. Who needs more Excel or Powerpoint templates? Anyone?

The product business is fine if the product has a finite lifetime. Take housing, for instance. People will always need to repair and build houses, because they weather. Software doesn't, which means the only money to be made long-term on software is in support. The same argument applies to patents and other 'intellectual property'. Dolby has the right idea: come up with an idea, and license it until the end of time.

Companies that sell a product that doesn't break have already signed up for their death blow. Distributing the software online only speeds it up.

I just donated 50 Euros.

[mrright]

Why don't you do the same if you care about free speech? Freenet is already used by the chinese opposition. Some european countries like france, greece and germany already censor the internet, so freenet is also important for western "democracies".

Some day soon something like freenet will be nessecary even in the US if you want to say something critical about bush or ashcroft without getting on some list of potential terrorists.

regards,

mrright

Re:quotation

[amck]

Yes, its not so simple.

Unfortunately, censorship increasingly is becoming easy (with Palladium, etc.). As information transfer gets increasingly automated (ie happens via the internet) then censorship becomes automated, too.

We get forced to a hard choice: either censorship, or freedom. Freedom means not being able to censor the stuff we don't like (racism, paedophilia, etc). We have to look to other ways to fight these .

If you believe in freedom of speech, then your're defending that right for your enemies, too. Free speech means spending some of the rest of my life countering the arguments of holocaust deniers,etc.

But I'd rather do that than live without whistleblowers, in a world where employers, politicians, etc can use technologies like palladium to convince us all is right in the world, and stop us from hearing about, and _fixing_ the cruelties that exist. I don't believe for a second that most CEO's, etc. out there, given the tech. to prevent bad news of toxic waste , pollution, etc. problems in their factories killing people, would actually fix these problems if they could guarantee their workers could never tell anyone.

Our daily quality of life is guaranteed by freedom of speech. Its not just for wierdo politicos.

Freedom to only do Right Is Not Freedom!

[FreeUser]

The FreeNet principles are a good things, but I'm concerned about the possible wrong uses of freedom.

"Wrong" as defined by whom?

The Bush family thinks it is wrong to leak information emberrassing to the family out to the press, and they punish people severely (within their power) when they do so, yet what they do is clearly constitutional.

Supporters of Clinton felt it was severely wrong to have private, political groups fund and possibly incite lawsuits by private citizens for poltical ends, but clearly that was within the bounds of the constitution.

I'm not worried about nazi propaganda, I think is a good thing that the normal citizen have access to this information in order to study it.

Ah. So are you the person who gets to tell us what is "right" and what is "wrong?"

But pedophilia images and personal information can also be published through this channel with no ways to remove it. My only hope in this case is that these crimes can be pursued by police through other normal way.

Pedophilia is an illness, and people who act on those feelings are criminals. It was never necessary, nor smart, to subvert the first amendment by making information (child pornography) illegal to possess. Illegal to sell, yes (that falls under the commerce clause), but making the possession of child pornography illegal was a serious mistake.

Why? Two reasons I can think of off hand

1) Possession doesn't imply any intent or even desire. Ever get child porno SPAM in your mailbox? How about child porno popups when surfing completely unrelated adult pornography, or perusing newsgroups some looser has spammed with their vile crap? Most people have, and have immediately become guilty under the law for possessing child pornography (it is copied to your machine's memory). Worse still, that crap is cached on people's hard drives, often without their knowledge, for extended periods of time.

2) Any photographs are by definition evidence of a crime. Instead of banning information, such evidence could be routinely siezed, to be returned to its owner only after the crime (child molestation) has been solved. That would have had the twin benefit of not eroding the 1st amendment and building a strong incentive to squeel on the seller into the entire process.

The "dark side" of freedom is a red herring. If we are free, we are free to do things others disagree with. The only limits should be when those freedoms reduce the freedoms of others (that was what the founding fathers intended, after all). IN other words, in the case of pedophelia, the crime is the molestation and harm to the child (and the selling of a regulated, in this case banned, product), not the mere possession of the photographs. However, the police can and should seize any such photographic or video evidence, and keep it on hand in a file, until the case is solved and the child raping perpetrators convicted and put in prison. Of course, such evidence couldn't be returned until said perps had exhausted all appeal opportunities .

A little clear thinking would go a long way toward solving many of the 'problems' that come out of people's misuse of their liberties, without eliminating those liberties altogether. And those downsides which can't be eliminated through intelligent application of the law, within the bounds of the constitution, should be viewed as the price we are obligated to pay for liberty.

A price, by the way, which is laughably small compared to that which our forfathers paid in establishing and protecting those freedoms in times past.